In his powerful McConnell dissent, Clarence Thomas spelled out “the chilling endpoint” of the Court’s reasoning: “outright regulation of the press”—exactly what the campaign-reform theorists ultimately seek. “Media companies can run pro-candidate editorials as easily as nonmedia corporations can pay for advertisements,” Thomas explained. “Media corporations are influential. There is little doubt that the editorials and commentary they run can affect elections.” The Supreme Court has found little to distinguish media and non-media corporations. Asked Thomas: “What is to stop a future Congress from determining that the press is ‘too influential,’ and that the ‘appearance of corruption’ is significant when media organizations endorse candidates or run ‘slanted’ or ‘biased’ news stories in favor of candidates or parties?” Answer: Nothing. “Although today’s opinion does not expressly strip the press of First Amendment protection,” Thomas warned, “there is no principle of law or logic that would prevent the application of the Court’s reasoning in that setting. The press now operates at the whim of Congress.”

And blogs. How big a fine are you willing to pay to write a political column?

The Grand Canyon Gasbag deserves every unkind word said about him. Feingold rolled him like a kindergartner - although a good argument can be made that Mad John doesn't care much for bad press and is willing to do something about it. Like trash the First Amendment.

Flenser is correct about Alito's importance in this. It's a shame that O'Connor didn't retire in '01. It would have spared us having to listen to the worldwide jurisprudence crap.

Watching the degradation of free speech in England and Canada makes me worried too. Loss of free speech strikes me as the biggest ongoing threat to liberty and liberalism in this country. I hope that the statute will be tested and overturned or that congress gets up the gumption to repeal it.

yeh, Terrye--it's like the hate-crime issue, you hadda be 'for' it, even tho all the crimes were already crimes, and the federal law just opened a new profit-center for interest-groups. I mean, maybe a hundred years ago, but, now?

All over the United Kingdom, right now, real crimes are being committed: mobiles are being nicked, front doors are being kicked in, bollards are being lobbed through bus shelters - just to name some of the lighter activities that add so much to the gaiety of the nation. None of these is a "priority crime", as you'll know if you've ever endured the bureaucratic time-waster of reporting a burglary.

So what is a "priority crime"? Well, the other day, the author Lynette Burrows went on a BBC Five Live show to talk about the government's new "civil partnerships" and expressed her opinion - politely, no intemperate words - that the adoption of children by homosexuals was "a risk". The following day, Fulham police contacted her to discuss the "homophobic incident".

A Scotland Yard spokesperson told the Telegraph's Sally Pook that it's "standard policy" for "community safety units" to investigate "homophobic, racist and domestic incidents" because these are all "priority crimes" - even though, in the case of Mrs Burrows, there is (to be boringly legalistic about these things) no crime, as even the zealots of the Yard concede. "It is all about reassuring the community," said the very p.c. Plod to the Telegraph. "All parties have been spoken to by the police. No allegation of crime has been made. A report has been taken but is now closed."

So no crime was committed. Yet Mrs Burrows was "investigated" and a report about the "incident" and her involvement in it is now on a government computer somewhere. Oh, to be sure, the vicious homophobe wasn't dragged off to re-education camp - or more likely, given budgetary constraints, an overcrowded women's prison to be tossed in a cell with a predatory bull-dyke who could teach her the error of her homophobic ways.

But, on balance, that has the merit of at least being more obviously outrageous than the weaselly "community reassurance" approach of the Met. As it is, Lynette Burrows has been investigated by police merely for expressing an opinion. Which is the sort of thing we used to associate with police states. Indeed, it's the defining act of a police state: the arbitrary criminalisation of dissent from state orthodoxy.

WikiPedia has some interesting points: At Princeton, Alito led a student conference in 1971 called "The Boundaries of Privacy in American Society" which, among other things, supported curbs on domestic intelligence gathering, called for the legalization of sodomy, and urged for an end to discrimination against homosexuals in hiring by employers.[1] During said conference, Alito stated that "no private sexual act between consenting adults should be forbidden." Alito was also part of the conservative Concerned Alumni of Princeton which formed in 1972 to protest Princeton's position prohibiting recruitment by the ROTC, and which opposed admitting students to the Ivy League school under a race-based affirmative action program. [2] The executive committee of CAP published a statement in December 1973 that opposed "adoption of a sex-blind admission policy."

I think Bush signed it for the same reason he signed the very defective medicare drug bill. It's a politics of moving an issue off the table without argument. Very effective on the elective side but doubtful on the governance side.

The lack of the use of the veto also leads to budget bloat and the corruption that goes with it. If the Republicans don't exercise some real restraint in this years budget follies they are going to put themselves deservedly at risk. They also need to take another crack at the drug bill and work at better benefit delivery for the same or lower cost.

McCain lost something in that Vietnamese POW prison. I'm reusing something from some old thread at Roger's Place, but he seems to believe that "free speech" should be akin to communicative tapping systems among prisoners.

The Left wants to crush those who disagree with them. It has always been so and it will always be so.

the left is 'for' free speech, but against anyone but the left 'defining' it. the definitions of such things have 'penumbras' and are 'living documents' that ought to be 'adjusted' for new times. The left is the only thing that understands this 'liberal' attitude, so naturally, only the left can properly make these 'adjustments'.

Terrye, I spent June 2002 to August 2003 in my mom's home in Louisiana as her caregiver as she lay in a helpless due to an Ariel Sharon-type stroke. During that time I had a solid stream of vendors come to her door. These were private businesses with Medicare ties, seeing if mom needed this or that equipment or service.

So far, great. Helpful Uncle Sam!

But.

The stuff--wheelchairs, beds, baths, lifts, harnesses, walkers, physical therapies, all of it was almost incredibly overpriced, like a $1000 wheelchair that the rental company would charge Medicare $100/day for--and that we could've kept--along with a dozen other +/- $50-$100/day devices, for a year and a half, without one blink of oversight or complaint, as far as I could tell, from a single soul anywhere. Same with PT.

But, point, I could've filled her house with "free" devices she'd never use, and never would I've been challenged, not once, in those 15 months.

Nobody cares much, tho, because these small businesses (and they're all small, in my experience, small, local, headed by very friendly, helpful people) are recycling the federal $ into the local economy.

My mother's apartment is full of O2 equipment, paid for by medicare. She doesn't use any of it because she refuses to quit smoking and (reasonably enough) they don't want to put the O2 in lest she blow up the building.